As a color correction scheme for improving the color reproduction effect in a color reproduction process of a printer and printing press, a method of converting data of an input color space into data of an output color space by a color masking method that obtains data of the output color space via matrix operations of data of the input color space is prevalently used.
However, the output characteristics of a color printer and printing press show strong nonlinearity. Therefore, a global method such as a color masking method, i.e., a color correction method in which a change in matrix element influences the entire output color space, cannot sufficiently approximate the characteristics of the color printer and printing press in all color ranges.